


dévorer

by MonsterParade



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, I'm hesitant to classify this as a proper romance thing, Other, Trans Male Character, Trans Male Reader, and DEFINITELY eventual nasty sex stuff, because i am sick, because of what and how pennywise is, but it's definitely some kind of fucked up cameraderie, look this fic is going to be disgusting but you knew that already, of seeing only fem reader stuff for this clown bastard, so once again I have to fix things myself
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 17:28:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterParade/pseuds/MonsterParade
Summary: : to eat hungrily, eat quickly, eat greedily, eat heartily, eat up, swallow, gobble (up/down), guzzle (down), gulp (down), bolt (down), cram down, gorge oneself on, wolf (down), feast on~~~Cannibalism. It's tricky business. You'd moved to Derry in hopes of finding a quiet little place in which to sate your unusual appetites, but it turns out you've been hunting on someone else's territory.





	dévorer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this all in one go, for three and a half hours, in a sort of a stupor. It's my first time writing anything for Pennywise, so if you see any glaring mistakes please let me know, but aside from that-- just let me know what you think, and god willing I'll be getting to the next chapter by the time the movie part two comes out!!

The natural state of every animal thing is to be hungry. Life to extend life, taken and given, in a never-ending push and pull as old and unstoppable as the sea; as far as human impulses go, what you're doing is probably one of the _more_ natural things, really.  
  
That's a good way to justify it to yourself, anyway, whenever you have your doubts.  
  
Which are still becoming further away and farther between with every steady passage of time.  
  
\-------  
  
You're down in the basement of your new house, arms stretched up over your head, bouncing on your feet and bobbling your head to the beat of the song playing through your headphones as you hang a rack of power tools carefully on the wall. It feels like it's been a long time since you've moved, longer than usual, and you're eager to see what sort of home you can transform this old place into with a little loving touch.  
  
This new house is _ancient_, nearly decrepit, and to be honest you're shocked the realtor was even allowed to sell it to you-- it's certainly a big change from your last place, which had been a sweet little one-bedroom several states away with a cute little yard at the border of a forest. That forest had been one of your favorite things about the location, and when you hadn't been using the cover of the deep trees to dispose of _hazardous_ materials, you'd liked to go for long walks along the edges of it, breathing in the scent of the grass and leaves.  
  
You're going to miss it.  
  
But this new house is much bigger, with much more space for decorating, and after the authorities in your last town had started finding suspicious-looking bones scattered along the forest's hiking trails by wildlife, it had been well enough time for you to get a move on anyway.  
  
And besides; your new house has an old, old well hidden away, down in the basement, and you already know _exactly_ what you're going to be using that for.  
  
\-------  
  
Sometimes, your memory can be a little hazy. You can't quite remember when this had all started, when your appetites had first changed. You do remember _some_ facts, of course; you were a young adult when it began, pretty newly out on your own. Your parents were gone, and you'd never had siblings, leaving you no family to lean on. Your job had been exhausting, and joyless, and had milked you for everything you'd had while paying you barely enough to live on at a stretch. You remember that it had been winter, and you remember being _hungry_.  
  
But after that, like you'd said, things in your memory start to get a bit more blurry.  
  
You've never talked to anyone about your memory lapses, not a doctor or a therapist or anything-- how _could_ you, after all?-- but you usually assume that it has something to do with the fragile state of the human psyche, locking things away to protect its owner from the things that could cripple and destroy it, and in the interest of staying alive and free and out of jail for the time being, you have since elected to ignore those lapses and just let it be. The catalyst of your condition isn't really that important anyway. What's important is the result.  
  
_This_.  
  
It's your first kill since moving to Derry, and it feels, simultaneously, both familiar and monumentous. It feels like smashing a bottle of champagne on the hull of a new ship, or cracking open the cover of a brand-new book; it's a new start, again, at the same time as it grounds you.  
  
You're not the sort of person who tortures your victims. You've heard plenty about those sorts of serial killers on tv, and no, that's not for you-- you have no cat-like sadism to be found in playing with your food. You've just never felt the need. No, your kills are quick, and decisive, and as painless as you can make them for your victims when the situation permits. At its essence it's just food, after all, and you _do_ have to eat.  
  
You save a fortune at the grocery store nowadays.  
  
The meat that was once a man is no longer a man at all, lying disemboweled and dismembered on a tarp; you've cut his limbs away from his body, removing along with them the head, and most of the blood has been carefully funneled away, by a series of rigs and plastic sheeting, into the old well you're now standing next to.  
  
You'd done your research. Nowadays this well is non-functional, and it leads almost directly to the sewers, a huge network of them that runs underneath Derry. Five liters of human blood might be a task to ordinarily wash away, even in a bathtub or a shower, but your particular arrangement has lent itself very well to this problem, and even that much extra blood, when added into the massive swill of filthy water and floating garbage that fills up the sewer system, will wash away and disappear into the miasma beneath the town.  
  
It's a very handy little solution. As a bonus, the well is certainly big enough for you to toss scraps and refuse into as well if ever you run out of room to store the less enticing parts of the meat. A human person can seem a lot bigger when you're trying to find a freezer big enough for all of their odds and ends, and sometimes one person just can't eat it all, be you ever so hungry.  
  
"Gross," you say to yourself, as you carefully carry the once-a-man's detached head away from the rest of his body and over to the well by its hair. You're sure there are _some_ cannibals who eat the faces of their victims, but in your personal opinion that's just a bit much, and even the soft meat of the cheeks isn't worth having to stare down at a dead guy's milky, open eyes for the time it takes to cut it away. You've tried before to remove the eyes, and the teeth as well, for identification purposes, but the first pop and crunch of the optic nerves tearing had very nearly made you sick in a very violent way, so nowadays you've simply opted to do away with the whole thing and just hope that bacteria and rot and scavenging animals will eat away the bulk of the evidence before the time as it is ever eventually discovered.  
  
It's worked so far, at any rate, and you're not so naive to think you'll be able to avoid the police forever. Your way of life is always on a timer, and you've long since made your peace with that.  
  
"Sorry about this," you quietly tell the head, and then you lean over and drop it, without ceremony, down, down, down the long well and into oblivion below.  
  
You never hear it splash. It must be a _very_ deep well.  
  
\-------  
  
Surprisingly, you are not much prone to nightmares. One would think-- in fact _you_ would think-- that the sort of things you do would have some kind of terrible effect on the unconscious, sleeping mind...but you have honestly never been able to find much of a change to the content of your dreams from before your catalyst and after. When you do have nightmares, you find that they're still about silly things, like giant spiders or showing up to a job interview naked, and in general you actually sleep very soundly.  
  
So that alone makes this rather odd.  
  
You _know_ you're dreaming as soon as it starts, which is curious but also comforting; you close your eyes to sleep and when you open them, feeling like it's only a moment later, you're standing out in the yard of your old house, the one-bedroom, and there's a snowstorm blowing around you that you can feel the cold bite of as if it's real. Thankfully your dream self is properly bundled up for the weather, and you look around for just a minute, bewildered, before you shrug to yourself and just accept the turn of events.  
  
...Something about this dream feels like teeth. You _know_ that doesn't make any sense, but it's really the only way you can find to describe the sensation; something about this dream _feels_ like _teeth_, like sharp teeth, or the threat of them, open and waiting somewhere outside your vision, serrated at the edges and baring for your throat.  
  
It's uncomfortable and confusing, but you can't seem to wake yourself up, so you stuff your hands in your pockets and just try to ignore it.  
  
Everything still looks about the same as it did when you'd lived here and were awake. Granted, it's winter now and it was early autumn when you'd left (it's early autumn _now, _real now), but your old little house sits quietly behind you and the edge of the woods stretches forlornly to the front, and the places where you know there should be roads and sidewalks are snowed over and obscured and inaccessible to you, leaving you only those two choices.  
  
Even in a dream, the woods seem like a bad place to go in a snowstorm.  
  
So you turn around and head back through the yard to your old home, head down against the wind, snowflakes catching in your beginnings of a beard.  
  
You're quite focused on the little house and on not slipping, on keeping your footing in the snowdrifts while you pick your way through them towards that pleasant yellow paint you'd chosen for the outside of that house back when you'd first moved into it, and as such you barely see whatever it is that moves in the periphery of your vision-- but you _do_ see it, a flash of movement, and as your whip your head around to look you catch an impression of motion and a bright pop of color disappearing into the dark forest across the lawn. Something red, and something tall.  
  
It could be innocuous, but it greatly disquiets you.  
  
You turn your head back and pick up the pace back to the house.  
  
The snow sucks at your feet while you push your way through it, cold and solid and more ice than powder, and some of it slides down into your boots and melts and soaks into your socks, freezing cold, and squishes between your toes.  
  
You reach the mailbox. It's the same mailbox it's always been.  
  
Your name is no longer on it.  
  
_'Neibolt Street'_, it reads instead; the name and address of your new place, although it is definitely not. The flag on the side is up, indicating that you have mail, so on impulse you open it and find, sitting inside, a single, bright copper penny and nothing else. It just feels _right_, so you take the penny.  
  
The snow turns into rain as you put it in your pocket.  
  
Warm rain, much warmer than the snow, filling the air with steam as the hot water melts the ice and patters down onto your coat-- your coat that is no longer your winter wear, but that is suddenly the bright red plastic raincoat that you use when you take apart your victims, the one that hangs down past your knees and catches the blood spatter and flecks of gore. You have no hat or umbrella, so it doesn't do much now to keep you dry, and you squeal as you are drenched by the downpour and hurry up the driveway to the front door.  
  
The door opens for you without being touched, and you dash inside and close it.  
  
You immediately wish you hadn't. There is something heavy in here, some kind of energy that blankets your skin like a layer of grime as soon as the door closes behind you. Rubbing your arms doesn't dispel it, and you can feel goosebumps crawling up your arms and the back of your neck underneath your raincoat, so you rub yourself harder and hug your arms to your chest. You already know instinctively that the door will not re-open if you try it, so you turn to face the entryway and set your jaw.  
  
There's something _in_ here. Something calling for you, tugging at you like you're wound with strings, and it gives you the same feeling as whatever it was that you had glimpsed in the woods. That _teeth_ feeling.  
  
It's awful. You want to leave. You want to wake up now and be at home in your own bed, ready to start the day, ready to see the _sun_. But you can't, and you know what you must do, and you know that the dream won't end until you do it.  
  
So you clench your fists and start to walk.  
  
Down the hallway of your beloved old house, past mounted picture frames that used to hold photos of your family but now all hold the same photograph of you. Past the bookcase at the end of it, past the little window just above that shows nothing but grey rain, and around a corner that never used to be there, leading into a grimy room that you recognize only vaguely.  
  
It's the well room. It's the well room in your new house, but _old_, filthy and old, the way it probably must have been before the realtor cleaned it up enough to make it somewhat presentable. The floorboards are rotten and carpeted by a thick layer of dust, and they creak loudly underneath your feet as you stop, hesitating in the doorway, feeling cold sweat start to bead on your upper lip and your neck. That feeling of nearby teeth and panic is only ramping up with each moment you spend standing here. Spend staring at that well.  
  
Whatever's in here is in _there_, and you're afraid to look away from it.  
  
Your tarp is on the floor in front of it. And on top of that tarp, is the head, the head of the man you'd killed that you'd dropped down the well yesterday.  
  
You _don't_ want to approach it.  
  
But you know that you don't really have a choice. This dream is guiding you towards its conclusion, and you need to see it through, or you're only going to have to spend even longer inside these walls, unable to awaken. You take a step towards the head.  
  
The floor crackles and creaks.  
  
You take a step towards the head.  
  
Everything is still. The tarp is red with congealing blood.  
  
You take a step towards the head--  
  
The head moves.  
  
It only moves a little-- the jaw drops open, the eyelids flutter as if they're going to blink-- but that alone is plenty enough for you, and you let out a little shriek as you lunge forward, acting on instinct, and swing your leg forward as hard as you can and kick the thing like it's a starting football. It makes a dull sound as the toe of your boot connects with its cheek, and it sails into the air, flecking blood, spinning diagonally up and over the stone lip of the well.  
  
And a hand snaps up out of the dark well to catch it.  
  
You're frozen. You just freeze.  
  
It's a thin hand, slender, a human hand, gloved in white cloth; it catches the head by the hair and holds it, much as you did, aloft by the roots, and the dead milky eyes of that head stare at you as if it can recognize you as the body the hand is attached to hauls itself up out of the darkness.  
  
White, white and red, face paint, blue eyes, red, red, _red_ hair,  
  
it's a fucking _clown_.  
  
A _clown_ pulls itself up out of the old well with one arm, the other pulling the dead man's head to its chest, uncaring of the old blood that stains the ruffled fabric under its throat and soaks in to bloom like the petals of a flower, and you can't even move, can't even twitch, rooted by a fear so overwhelming it feels like death. For a second, you think this might be Hell.  
  
The clown hauls itself up with bent legs and then stops, perched, on the edge of the stone rim, and it looks at you with the brightest blue eyes you've ever seen and a painted smile that its lips curve to follow, crouched like a gargoyle on a church parapet. Your throat works furiously, but no sound comes out, and the clown smiles wider as if it _knows_ and kicks into motion.  
  
Both its feet fly out from under it as if someone's just swept its legs and it collapses, landing in a clumsy sit, atop the edge of the well, and you jump when it moves as you fully expect it to lunge for you, _grab_ at you. It doesn't, though, and you're left standing there while it readjusts and daintily crosses one leg over the other at the knee, one hand resting on the matted hair of the dead man's head, the other tucking under the clown's chin.  
  
"Howdy-ho, neighbor!" the clown exclaims then, with a little bobble of its head, and its voice is much higher-pitched than you would have imagined, almost breathless. You stare. The clown giggles.  
  
"_I_ heard from a little birdy, that _you_ have moved into the well house," it continues, its gaze sliding from you down to the head on its lap while it speaks. It's still smiling, but that does absolutely nothing to soothe your fears, and you _know_ that this clown is the thing that you saw in the woods, and the thing that has now led you here, to it. "Yes. Is that so? _Yes!_ A _human_ has moved into the well house! Isn't that just funny?"  
  
You need to _run_. You need to run, like, _now_, as fast as you can. But you still can't move.  
  
The clown's gaze drags back up to you again, and its smile twists into a frown faster than you can even blink. It leaps up off of the edge of the well, graceful, like a cat, and lands with a massive crash on its feet in front of you, and then its face is stretching, splitting, and every word it continues to speak gets more and more furious, until that first breathless squeak of a voice is buried under thunderous rage.  
  
_"**My** well house! Funny, funny, **funny!**"_  
  
It stomps forward until it's literally nose-to-nose with you, the painted tip of its own pressing into yours, and you're suddenly glad that you don't have to breathe in a dream, because your throat feels like it has just closed up for good. The clown smells heavily of rot, and you taste iron and sugar on the back of your tongue, and the awful combination makes your mouth water. It jabs a gloved finger into your chest so hard it could bruise.  
  
"_No humans living in Pennywise's well house, no, no. Pennywise's **special** place, where it drags the children and takes its **loooong** sleep. **Unwelcome! Houseguest!**"_ it shrieks, and you can feel tears spilling from your eyes and down your cheeks as you stay locked in front of it, watching those blue eyes turn yellow and slitted. You'd scream if you could. You'd probably vomit, if you could. You've never been this terrified in your life, not ever. Fear billows off of this thing like smoke from a fire. It fills your chest and your lungs and leaves you light-headed, almost dazed.  
  
The clown's mouth snaps shut, you can hear the click of teeth, and then it draws back a little so it can look at you properly again and that rage fades back underneath its painted veneer as quickly as it had erupted. It leaves your head spinning as you try to keep up.  
  
The clown-- Pennywise, apparently-- wrinkles its nose, raises the head it's still holding, and flashes you a smile.  
  
"You would be dead if you hadn't left gifts," it tells you, "Deader than a doornail! Deader than a dead-light! Hm, yes."  
  
It looks you dead in the eyes as it tells you this, and slowly, almost teasingly, it raises the head in its hand up to its lips, waggling its eyebrows playfully, and bites into it like an apple. The loud dull crunch of the skull breaking followed by the squelch of the brain is obscene, and it's what you need to finally break free of your terror-induced paralysis, your body jerking backwards of its own accord as you take a ragged breath, slip down to the floor, and _scream_.  
  
Pennywise's eyes are blue again instead of yellow, but they're still slit-pupiled, and those pupils grow wide at the sound of your distress as you try to scrabble backwards across the dusty floorboards. It doesn't try to stop you, and instead smiles at you and waves while it pops an eyeball like a grape between its large front teeth. You flip around onto your hands and knees and scramble for the door.  
  
"No goodbye?" you hear it ask, mockingly. "Very bad manners for a houseguest."  
  
You sit up onto your knees to grab at the doorknob (and when had it _closed?_ Had there been a door here at all?), ignoring the clown, and the _relief_ you feel when the knob clicks and the door swings open is almost rapturous.  
  
It's also very short-lived.  
  
A hand knots itself into the back of your raincoat and yanks you up, backwards, off your feet, and into the air. Pennywise dangles you like a scruffed kitten, gore running down its chin, and listens to your voice break as you cry out in terror.  
  
"I'm _sorry_," you sob, more tears rolling down your face, "I didn't _know!_ I'll leave! I'll leave your house, I promise! I swear! Just let me-- just--"  
  
"Just l-l-let me, just, just, just," Pennywise mimics you, making a sad face and pretending to rub tears from its eyes. It laughs, that hiccupy airy sound again, and then extends a finger and lightly boops you on the tip of the nose, grinning as you flinch. "No need. Stay! Yes, _stay_ in the well house! I will let you live, free of harm and free of fear, as long as you kill all your people in the basement and throw their blood and bones and scraps to me."  
  
Surprised despite yourself, you sniffle hard and blink away the tears.  
  
"Really? That's...all you want...? I thought you didn't want me in, in your house at all."  
  
Pennywise hums.  
  
"I can change my mind. You can stay and feed me morsels, or you can run, run as _fast_ as you can, and I will follow you to the ends of the earth and _still_ hunt you down. Everything dies-- when do _you_ want to?"  
  
None of this makes sense. Not even a little bit, does any of this make sense. You'd thought this thing wanted you _gone_, it had only just been screaming about it, so why would it now force you to _stay?_ Your head is so foggy, and it's pounding so bad, that all of your questions just slide around inside your mind before you can even grab hold of them, leaving you in a miasma of confusion and fear. You hang in the clown's grip like a dead weight, and it taps your nose again and gives you an expectant look.  
  
"Well?"  
  
You don't see that you have any kind of a choice. Questions, if you even survive, can all come later. Much, much later.  
  
"...Okay." you relent, quietly, with your eyes cast down. "Whatever you want. I'll stay."  
  
Pennywise doesn't say anything, just laughs again, and you don't dare to look up, so if it's smiling again you don't see it. You just hang there, defeated, and then the clown turns, startling you, and cocks its arm back as you yelp and thrash, and it hurls you across the room and down into the old well as the darkness swallows you whole, your nails dragging helplessly down the slick wet sides of the stones.  
  
  
  
  
You wake up in your own bed, soaked with cold sweat, screaming bloody murder.


End file.
